Origins

Devanāgarī is part of the Brahmic
family of scripts of Nepal, India, Tibet, and South-East Asia.
It is a descendant of the Gupta script,
along with Siddham and Sharada. Eastern variants of Gupta called
Nāgarī are first attested from the 8th century; from c.
1200 these
gradually replaced Siddham, which survived as a vehicle for Tantric
Buddhism in East Asia, and Sharada, which remained in parallel use
in Kashmir.

Sanskrit is the feminine of "urban(e)", a
vrddhi adjectival form of nagaram
"Nagar in Marathi" called establishment. It is feminine from its
original phrasing with lipi "script" as "urban(e) script",
that is, the script of the cultured establishment. There are
several varieties of Nāgarī in use,
one of which was distinguished by affixing Deva "god" or "deity" to form a
tatpurusha compound meaning the "urban(e)
[script] of the gods", or "divine urban(e) [script]".

The use of the name is relatively recent, and the older term is
still common. The rapid spread of the term may be related to the
almost exclusive use of this script to publish sacred Sanskrit
texts in colonial times. This has led to such a close connection
between Devanāgarī and Sanskrit that Devanāgarī is now widely
thought to be the Sanskrit script; however, before the
colonial period there was no standard script for Sanskrit, which
was written in whichever script was familiar to the local
populace.

Principles

As a Brahmic abugida, the fundamental
principle of Devanāgarī is that each letter represents a consonant,
which carries an inherent vowel a [ə]. For example, the
letter क is read ka, the two letters कन are kana,
the three कनय are kanaya, etc. Other vowels, or the
absence of vowels, require modification of these consonants or
their own letters:

Consonant clusters are written
with ligatures(
"conjuncts"). For example, the three letters कनय kanaya
may be joined to form क्नय knaya, कन्य kanya, or
क्न्य knya.

Vowels other than the inherent a are written with
diacritics (termed matras). For
example, using क ka, the following forms can be derived:
के ke, कु ku, की kī, का kā,
etc.

For vowels as an independent syllable (in writing, unattached
to a consonant), either at the beginning of a word or after another
vowel, there are full-letter forms. For example, while the vowel
ū is written with the diacritic in कू kū, it has
its own letter ऊ in ऊक ūka and कऊ kaū.

A final consonant is marked with the diacritic , called the
virāma in Sanskrit,
halanta in Hindi, and a "killer stroke" in English. This
cancels the inherent vowel, so that from क्नय knaya is
derived क्नय् knay. The halanta will often be
used for consonant clusters when typesetting ligatures is not
feasible.

Such a letter or ligature, with its diacritics, is called an
"syllable". For example, कनय kanaya is written with what
are counted as three akshara, whereas क्न्य knya
and कु ku are each written with one.

As far as handwriting is concerned,
letters are usually written without the distinctive horizontal bar,
which is only added once the word is finished being written.

Letters

The letter order of Devanāgarī,
like nearly all Brahmi scripts, is based on phonetic principles which consider both the
manner and place of articulation of the
consonants and vowels they represent. This arrangement is usually
referred to as the "garland of letters". The
format of Devanāgarī for Sanskrit serves as
the prototype for its application, with minor variations or
additions, to other languages.

Arranged with the vowels are two consonantal diacritics, the final nasalanusvāraं and the final fricativevisargaः (called अं and अः). notes of the
anusvāra in Sankrit that "there is some controversy as to
whether it represents a homorganic nasal
consonant [...], a nasalized
vowel, a nasalized semivowel, or all
these according to context". The visarga represents
post-vocalic voiceless
glottal fricative , in Sanskrit an allophone of , or less commonly
, usually in word-final position. Some traditions of
recitation append an echo of the vowel after
the breath: इः . considers the
visarga along with letters ङ and ञ for the "largely predictable" velar and palatal
nasals to be examples of "phonetic overkill in the
system".

Another diacritic is the candrabindu/anunāsikaँ. describes it as a "more emphatic form"
of the , "sometimes [...] used to mark a true [vowel]
nasalization". In a New Indo-Aryan language such as Hindi the distinction is formal: the indicates
vowel nasalization while the
indicates a homorganic nasal
preceding another consonant: e.g. हँसी
"laughter", गंगा "Ganges".
When an akshara has a vowel diacritic above the top line,
that leaves no room for the candra ("moon") stroke
candrabindu, which is dispensed with in favour of the lone
dot: हूँ "am", but
हैं "are". Some writers and
typesetters dispense with the "moon" stroke altogether, using only
the dot in all situations.

The avagrahaऽ (usually transliterated with an apostrophe) is a Sanskrit punctuation mark for the elision of a vowel in sandhi: एकोऽयम्
( + ) "this one". An original long vowel
lost to coalescence is sometimes marked with a double
avagraha:सदाऽऽत्मा (
+ ) "always, the self". In Hindi, states that
its "main function is to show that a vowel is sustained in a cry or
a shout": आईऽऽऽ! . In Magahi, which has "quite a number of
verbal forms [that] end in that inherent vowel"
, the avagraha is used to mark the non-elision of
word-final inherent a, which otherwise is a modern
orthographic convention: बइठऽ "sit" versus *बइठ

The syllabic consonants , , and are specific to
Sanskrit and not included in the of other languages. The sound
represented by has been lost as well, and its pronunciation now
ranges from (Hindi) to (Marathi).

is not an actual phoneme of Sanskrit, but rather a graphic convention included
among the vowels in order to maintain the symmetry of short–long
pairs of letters.

Beyond the Sanskritic set new shapes have rarely been
formulated. offers the following, "In any case, according to some,
all possible sounds had already been described and provided for in
this system, as Sanskrit was the original and perfect language.
Hence it was difficult to provide for or even to conceive
other sounds, unknown to the phoneticians of Sanskrit." Where foreign
borrowings and internal developments did inevitably accrue and
arise in New Indo-Aryan languages, they have been either ignored in
writing, or dealt through means such as diacritics and ligatures
(ignored in recitation).

The most prolific diacritic has been the subscriptnuqtā़. Hindi uses it for
the Persian sounds क़qa , ख़xa , ग़ , ज़za , and फ़fa , and for the
allophonic developments ड़ and ढ़ . (Although ऴ could also exist but there is no use of
it in Hindi.)

Conjuncts

You will only be able to see the ligatures if your system
has a Unicode font installed that includes the required ligature
glyphs (e.g. one of the TDIL fonts, see "external links" below).

As mentioned, successive consonants lacking a vowel in between them
may physically join together as a conjunct or ligature. The government of these
clusters ranges from widely to narrowly applicable rules, with
special exceptions within. While standardized for the most part,
there are certain variations in clustering, of which the Unicode used on this page is just one scheme. The
following are a number of rules:

24 out of the 36 consonants contain a vertical right stroke
(ख, घ, ण
etc.). As first or middle fragments/members of a cluster, they lose
that stroke. e.g. त +
व = त्व, ण + ढ
= ण्ढ, स + थ
= स्थ. शś(a) appears as a different,
simple ribbon-shaped fragment preceding वva, नna, चca, लla, and रra, causing these second
members to be shifted down and reduced in size. Thus श्वśva, श्नśna, श्चścaश्लśla, and श्रśra.

रr(a) as a first
member takes the form of a curved upward dash above the final
character or its ā-diacritic. e.g. र्वrva, र्वाrvā, र्स्पrspa, र्स्पाrspā. As a final member
with ट ठ ड ढ ङ छ it is two
lines below the character, pointed downwards and apart. Thus
ट्र ठ्र ड्र ढ्र ङ्र छ्र.
Elsewhere as a final member it is a diagonal stroke extending
leftwards and down. e.g. क्र ग्र
भ्र. तta is
shifted up to make त्रtra.

As first members, remaining characters lacking vertical strokes
such as दd(a) and
हh(a) may have their
second member, reduced in size and lacking its horizontal stroke,
placed underneath. कk(a), छch(a), and फph(a) shorten their right hooks and join them directly to
the following member.

The conjuncts for and are not clearly derived from the letters
making up their components. The conjunct for is क्ष (क् + ष)and for it is ज्ञ (ज् + ञ).

The table below shows all the 1296 viable symbols
for the biconsonantal clusters
formed by collating the 36 fundamental symbols of
Sanskrit as listed in . Scroll your cursor over
the conjuncts to reveal their romanizations (in IAST-International
Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration) and IPA
pronunciations.

Biconsonantal conjuncts

क

ख

ग

घ

ङ

च

छ

ज

झ

ञ

ट

ठ

ड

ढ

ण

त

थ

द

ध

न

प

फ

ब

भ

म

य

र

ल

व

श

ष

स

ह

ळ

क्ष

ज्ञ

क

ख

ग

घ

ङ

च

छ

ज

झ

ञ

ट

ठ

ड

ढ

ण

त

थ

द

ध

न

प

फ

ब

भ

म

य

र

ल

व

श

ष

स

ह

ळ

क्ष

ज्ञ

New Indo-Aryan languages may use the above forms for their Sanskrit
loanwords (or otherwise).

Accent marks

The pitch accent of Vedic Sanskrit is written with various
symbols depending on shakha. In the Rigveda, anudātta is written with a bar
below the line (॒), svarita with a stroke above the line
(॑) while udātta is unmarked.

Punctuation

The end of a sentence or half-verse may be marked with a purna
viraam or vertical line: "|". The end of a full verse may be
marked with a two vertical lines: "||". A comma, or alpa
viraam, is used to denote a natural pause in speech.

Numerals

Devanāgarī numerals

०

१

२

३

४

५

६

७

८

९

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Transliteration

There are several methods of transliteration from Devanāgarī into
Roman scripts. The most widely used
transliteration method is IAST. However, there
are other transliteration options.

IAST

The International Alphabet of Sanskrit
Transliteration is the academic standard for the romanization
of Sanskrit. IAST is the de-facto standard
used in printed publications, like books and magazines, and with
the wider availability of Unicode fonts, it
is also increasingly used for electronic texts. It is based on a
standard established by the Congress of Orientalists at
Athens in 1912.

Harvard-Kyoto

Compared to IAST, Harvard-Kyoto looks much simpler. It does not
contain all the diacritic marks that IAST
contains. This makes typing in Harvard-Kyoto much easier than IAST.
Harvard-Kyoto uses capital letters
that can be difficult to read in the middle of words.

ITRANS

ITRANS is a lossless transliteration scheme
of Devanāgarī into ASCII that is widely used
on Usenet. It is an extension of the Harvard-Kyoto scheme. In ITRANS, the word
Devanāgarī is written as "Devanaagarii". ITRANS is
associated with an application of the same name that enables
typesetting in Indic scripts. The
user inputs in Roman letters and the ITRANS pre-processor displays
the Roman letters into Devanāgarī (or other Indic languages). The
latest version of ITRANS is version 5.30
released in July, 2001.

ALA-LC Romanization

ALA-LC romanization is a transliteration scheme
approved by the Library of Congress and the American Library
Association, and widely used in North American libraries.
Transliteration tables are based on languages, so there is a table
for Hindi, one for Sanskrit and Prakrit, etc.

Encodings

ISCII

ISCII is a fixed-length 8-bit encoding. The lower
128 codepoints are plain ASCII, the upper 128
codepoints are ISCII-specific.

It has been designed for representing not only Devanāgarī, but also
various other Indic scripts as well as
a Latin-based script with diacritic marks used for transliteration
of the Indic scripts.

ISCII has largely been superseded by Unicode, which has however attempted to preserve the
ISCII layout for its Indic language blocks.

Typewriter

Phonetic

Alphabetic (देवनागरी)

The aA Hindi keyboard (अ आ हिन्दी कुंजीपटल) is based on the
Devanāgarī alphabet set more fully detailed here:
http://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/अ_आ_कुंजीपटल for image - (click
here)

The Mac OS X operating system supports
convenient editing for the Devanāgarī script by insertion of
appropriate Unicode characters with two different keyboard layouts available for use. The
layout is the same as for INSCRIPT/KDE Linux.